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Choice of Game

It's the sort of thing that people tend to think about when they're trying to search up videos. Be it a new release or an old release, people will search up games on a video site out of a want to see that game once again.

This point in time is quite an interesting one. Games of the past originally were tied to the platform of its time, and as the coding was specific to a particular piece of hardware (the console), it would eventually cease to be played. These days, developers and publishers found they could take advantage of the 'nostalgia factor' associated with their titles, and re-release them.

But discussion of re-releases isn't the point of this article. It's about picking a game. And as a content creator, this is something to consider when comparing your rating compared to others. A game that is from the past simply won't do as well as a newly released title. People like new things.

What drives this audience's motivation is fairly simple. By watching a person's recording of that game, they can gain a level of insight into the game that is being played. A typical review will go over the general feelings as a person plays a game, but with access to actual reactions, a better understanding can be formed to the reasoning behind their beliefs.

The most important part of that motivation is in that this can all be done before the audience has even purchased the game.

So, by being able to get a video out there, the audience will naturally seek it out as part of their research. This is seen especially in the days leading up to the launch of a new game. Due to the lack of footage anywhere else, if you manage to get a video out people will come looking for it.

But a new launch title doesn't necessarily have to be the video that you put out. Older games still will amount to some views. Of course, that means having to deal with the fact that such a video will basically be a drop in the ocean. Most of the other content creators might have packed and moved on, but it does leave opportunity to sneak in:

You might be able to get this far, and you're doing pretty well if you are. On a video platform like YouTube, your videos are assessed on a number of factors, and this in turn affects how close to the top of the search results your videos will end up. The list is fairly large, but includes things such as title, description, and tags. These are the things you can set, but there's more to it than that.

Audience retention was introduced to reassess a video's rank. In an attempt to curb the likes of clickbait titles and sexually implied thumbnails, videos are now additionally ranked by how long a person watches through the video. No longer would views be the definitive metric to determine how good your videos were.

Of course, that still applies today as it did when the changes went live. If you can't get a video with a good retention rate, your video search ranking will suffer. You can only affect this retention via the audience, and that means your content has to keep the audience's eyes. It comes down to how well your content is taken, and depending on that can make or break a video.

To summarise it up, it's best to think that new titles will be sought after considering the lack of information. Doing an old game is not as likely to draw in new viewers as the pool of videos relating to such titles are significantly larger than that of a new game. Take that into consideration when you're looking at your analytics be it a week, month, even a year after you've posted a video.